The Fruit of the Tree - Edith Wharton (reading well txt) 📗

to her room again. She undressed slowly, trying to prolong the process as much as possible, to put off the period of silence and inaction which would close in on her when she lay down on her bed. But at length the dreaded moment came--there was nothing more between her and the night. She crept into bed and put out the light; but as she slipped between the cold sheets a trembling seized her, and after a moment she drew on her dressing-gown again and groped her way to the lounge by the fire.

She pushed the lounge closer to the hearth and lay down, still shivering, though she had drawn the quilted coverlet up to her chin. She lay there a long time, with closed eyes, in a mental darkness torn by sudden flashes of memory. In one of these flashes a phrase of Amherst's stood out--a word spoken at Westmore, on the day of the opening of the Emergency Hospital, about a good-looking young man who had called to see her. She remembered Amherst's boyish burst of jealousy, his sudden relief at the thought that the visitor might have been Wyant. And no doubt it _was_ Wyant--Wyant who had come to Hanaford to threaten her, and who, baffled by her non-arrival, or for some other unexplained reason, had left again without carrying out his purpose.

It was dreadful to think by how slight a chance her first draught of happiness had escaped that drop of poison; yet, when she understood, her inward cry was: "If it had happened, my dearest need not have suffered!"... Already she was feeling Amherst's pain more than her own, understanding that it was harder to bear than hers because it was at war with all the reflective part of his nature.

As she lay there, her face pressed into the cushions, she heard a sound through the silent house--the opening and closing of the outer door. She turned cold, and lay listening with strained ears.... Yes; now there was a step on the stairs--her husband's step! She heard him turn into his own room. The throbs of her heart almost deafened her--she only distinguished confusedly that he was moving about within, so close that it was as if she felt his touch. Then her door opened and he entered.

He stumbled slightly in the darkness before he found the switch of the lamp; and as he bent over it she saw that his face was flushed, and that his eyes had an excited light which, in any one less abstemious, might almost have seemed like the effect of wine.

"Are you awake?" he asked.

She started up against the cushions, her black hair streaming about her small ghostly face.

"Yes."

He walked over to the lounge and dropped into the low chair beside it.

"I've given that cur a lesson he won't forget," he exclaimed, breathing hard, the redness deepening in his face.

She turned on him in joy and trembling. "John!--Oh, John! You didn't follow him? Oh, what happened? What have you done?"

"No. I didn't follow him. But there are some things that even the powers above can't stand. And so they managed to let me run across him--by the merest accident--and I gave him something to remember."

He spoke in a strong clear voice that had a brightness like the brightness in his eyes. She felt its heat in her veins--the primitive woman in her glowed at contact with the primitive man. But reflection chilled her the next moment.

"But why--why? Oh, how could you? Where did it happen--oh, not in the street?"

As she questioned him, there rose before her the terrified vision of a crowd gathering--the police, newspapers, a hideous publicity. He must have been mad to do it--and yet he must have done it because he loved her!

"No--no. Don't be afraid. The powers looked after that too. There was no one about--and I don't think he'll talk much about it."

She trembled, fearing yet adoring him. Nothing could have been more unlike the Amherst she fancied she knew than this act of irrational anger which had magically lifted the darkness from his spirit; yet, magically also, it gave him back to her, made them one flesh once more. And suddenly the pressure of opposed emotions became too strong, and she burst into tears.

She wept painfully, violently, with the resistance of strong natures unused to emotional expression; till at length, through the tumult of her tears, she felt her husband's reassuring touch.

"Justine," he said, speaking once more in his natural voice.

She raised her face from her hands, and they looked at each other.

"Justine--this afternoon--I said things I didn't mean to say."

Her lips parted, but her throat was still full of sobs, and she could only look at him while the tears ran down.

"I believe I understand now," he continued, in the same quiet tone.

Her hand shrank from his clasp, and she began to tremble again. "Oh, if you only _believe_...if you're not sure...don't pretend to be!"

He sat down beside her and drew her into his arms. "I am sure," he whispered, holding her close, and pressing his lips against her face and hair.

"Oh, my husband--my husband! You've come back to me?"

He answered her with more kisses, murmuring through them: "Poor child--poor child--poor Justine...." while he held her fast.

With her face against him she yielded to the childish luxury of murmuring out unjustified fears. "I was afraid you had gone back to Hanaford----"

"Tonight? To Hanaford?"

"To tell your mother." She felt a contraction of the arm embracing her, as though a throb of pain had stiffened it.

"I shall never tell any one," he said abruptly; but as he felt in her a responsive shrinking he gathered her close again, whispering through the hair that fell about her cheek: "Don't talk, dear...let us never talk of it again...." And in the clasp of his arms her terror and anguish subsided, giving way, not to the deep peace of tranquillized thought, but to a confused well-being that lulled all thought to sleep.


XXXVII

BUT thought could never be long silent between them; and Justine's triumph lasted but a day.

With its end she saw what it had been made of: the ascendency of youth and sex over his subjugated judgment. Her first impulse was to try and maintain it--why not use the protective arts with which love inspired her? She who lived so keenly in the brain could live as intensely in her feelings; her quick imagination tutored her looks and words, taught her the spells to weave about shorn giants. And for a few days she and Amherst lost themselves in this self-evoked cloud of passion, both clinging fast to the visible, the palpable in their relation, as if conscious already that its finer essence had fled.

Amherst made no allusion to what had passed, asked for no details, offered no reassurances--behaved as if the whole episode had been effaced from his mind. And from Wyant there came no sound: he seemed to have disappeared from life as he had from their talk.

Toward the end of the week Amherst announced that he must return to Hanaford; and Justine at once declared her intention of going with him.

He seemed surprised, disconcerted almost; and for the first time the shadow of what had happened fell visibly between them.

"But ought you to leave Cicely before Mr. Langhope comes back?" he suggested.

"He will be here in two days."

"But he will expect to find you."

"It is almost the first of April. We are to have Cicely with us for the summer. There is no reason why I should not go back to my work at Westmore."

There was in fact no reason that he could produce; and the next day they returned to Hanaford together.

With her perceptions strung to the last pitch of sensitiveness, she felt a change in Amherst as soon as they re-entered Bessy's house. He was still scrupulously considerate, almost too scrupulously tender; but with a tinge of lassitude, like a man who tries to keep up under the stupefying approach of illness. And she began to hate the power by which she held him. It was not thus they had once walked together, free in mind though so linked in habit and feeling; when their love was not a deadening drug but a vivifying element that cleared thought instead of stifling it. There were moments when she felt that open alienation would be easier, because it would be nearer the truth. And at such moments she longed to speak, to beg him to utter his mind, to go with her once for all into the depths of the subject they continued to avoid. But at the last her heart always failed her: she could not face the thought of losing him, of hearing him speak estranging words to her.

They had been at Hanaford for about ten days when, one morning at breakfast, Amherst uttered a sudden exclamation over a letter he was reading.

"What is it?" she asked in a tremor.

He had grown very pale, and was pushing the hair from his forehead with the gesture habitual to him in moments of painful indecision.

"What is it?" Justine repeated, her fear growing.

"Nothing----" he began, thrusting the letter under the pile of envelopes by his plate; but she continued to look at him anxiously, till she drew his eyes to hers.

"Mr. Langhope writes that they've appointed Wyant to Saint Christopher's," he said abruptly.

"Oh, the letter--we forgot the letter!" she cried.

"Yes--we forgot the letter."

"But how dare he----?"

Amherst said nothing, but the long silence between them seemed full of ironic answers, till she brought out, hardly above her breath: "What shall you do?"

"Write at once--tell Mr. Langhope he's not fit for the place."

"Of course----" she murmured.

He went on tearing open his other letters, and glancing at their contents. She leaned back in her chair, her cup of coffee untasted, listening to the recurrent crackle of torn paper as he tossed aside one letter after another.

Presently he rose from his seat, and as she followed him from the dining-room she noticed that his breakfast had also remained untasted. He gathered up his letters and walked toward the smoking-room; and after a moment's hesitation she joined him.

"John," she said from the threshold.

He was just seating himself at his desk, but he turned to her with an obvious effort at kindness which made the set look of his face the more marked.

She closed the door and went up to him.

"If you write that to Mr. Langhope--Dr. Wyant will--will tell him," she said.

"Yes--we must be prepared for that."

She was silent, and Amherst flung himself down on the leather ottoman against the wall. She stood before him, clasping and unclasping her hands in speechless distress.

"What would you have me do?" he asked at length, almost irritably.

"I only thought...he told me he would keep straight...if he only had a chance," she faltered out.

Amherst lifted his head slowly, and looked at her. "You mean--I am to do nothing? Is that it?"

She moved nearer to him with beseeching eyes. "I can't bear it.... I can't bear that others should come between us," she broke out passionately.

He made no answer, but she could see a look of suffering cross his face, and coming still closer, she sank down